


Blank Canvas

by ayesakara



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Misunderstandings, Post-Series, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-17
Updated: 2012-12-16
Packaged: 2017-11-21 07:58:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/595345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ayesakara/pseuds/ayesakara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Justin knows Brian loves him, knows the gift he's been given. But does he know Brian? There are things in their lives that bind them together forever. Through thick and thin, and love and pain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for qaf_anon in April 2006
> 
> AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thanks to severina2001 for looking at it at the last moment. You rock!

1.

 

It’s the smell of freshly brewed coffee that pulls you out of your slumber.

The loft is still filled with shadows, the blinds on the bedroom windows pulled down, making sure no errant sunrays come inside to disturb you. But when the slow tick-tick-tick of the bedside clock makes you turn your head to check the time, you realize it’s too early for that. Five forty seven am. More than enough time to go back to sleep if you wanted to.

You can hear Brian moving around the kitchen. Opening cabinets, closing shelves. How intriguing that you wake up to the same sounds now as you did last night. The sounds of Brian tending to the last chores around the loft, locking doors, turning lights off, before he came to join you. Before he admitted that your freaking out at Gus’ birthday party had freaked him out too. How hard was it to believe that for that one unruly moment, before you let him touch you? Before you saw his hesitancy and reached out for him with your own hands, urging him to heal you.

How hard.

And yet how soft was his touch. His hands soothing on your skin, his fingers caressing you carefully, tenderly. That sweet ache still resides inside you, the evidence of Brian being there, loving you, taking care of you, as if you were fragile and delicate and had to be handled with caution and unprecedented care.

And yet he was the one who...

You suddenly sit up on the bed and frown into the semi-darkness. The only light in the loft is coming from the kitchen and it’s not enough to make your surroundings that easy to see. Still you look down at the floor besides the bed and then push yourself off the bed to stand up and look on the other sides. Nothing. You think of pulling back the bedclothes to see if it is there but you know it isn’t.

You look through the slits of the bedroom blinds and can make out the outline of Brian’s form, sitting on a barstool in his blue silk gown. Your eyes following his every move, you slowly sit back down on the bed and observe him quietly—watching his fingers idly play with the rim of the coffee mug, sitting deep in thought, as he slowly sips coffee at this ungodly hour.

It’s gone.

The scarf that had lain hidden under his shirt all these weeks, stained with your dried, crusty blood, is gone. You pulled it from around his neck last night, its brittle weight like a dirty, shriveled reminder of that night you can’t really remember, as you freed him from its unwelcome burden.

You wonder if he has hidden it somewhere or if it’s been disposed off for good while you were sleeping.

You know this must be the same scarf that Daphne said he wore the night of the prom. For some inscrutable reason, you are almost sorry it’s gone. For a fleeting moment, you even wondered if you could get it cleaned up for him so that he could wear it again.

Except the memory of your blood on it comes back and you realize that you can’t even begin to comprehend what made him wear it for days and weeks under his shirt like that. You know guilt was part of it but was that all? Do you even want to know? How the hell do you assuage someone’s guilt over something you can’t even remember yourself?

Well, it’s gone now. It’s better this way. It was only bad memories. Better to bury them, away and out of sight, than to keep thinking about them.

You can’t help but wonder, though, if you would ever see it again.

 

*********

 

2.

 

It’s the need to relieve your bladder that pulls you out of your slumber.

You lie cocooned in the nest of pillows and blankets, your back against Brian’s chest, his nose buried in your skin. He’s snoring softly, his warm breath fanning the back of your neck, his arms wound securely around you even in sleep.

You let the memories of last night wash over you. After claiming Brian once again for yourself at his office, and then letting him lay his mark on you once more with a long, hard fuck on his desk, the two of you came back to the loft. To sights and sounds of this place that you’d called home for so many months, and then the taste of his skin beneath your tongue. Everything was like a breathtakingly cool downpour of rain after months of draught.

After months of Ethan.

The past few months suddenly seem like an easily forgotten memory, as if Ethan didn’t mean anything of consequence, of importance. You now realize that he really didn’t. Ethan was the kind of mistake you vow never to repeat again. You will never again fall for an illusion built on falsehoods and deceit, on empty words and stupid lies. You feel like a world-class idiot for being so naïve, for falling for all that bullshit in the first place – to quote Brian.

But it doesn’t matter anymore. You have Brian now and he took you back. That is the only thing that matters.

You run your fingers over the top of his right hand resting on your stomach, caressing his fingers, and turn your face to nuzzle his shoulder. He stirs in his sleep at this, his long lashes fluttering, and you quickly drop an apologetic kiss on the same shoulder. God, you love the way he smells, the way he moulds against you, the way he tastes. You missed him so fucking much. You don’t want to wake him up at this hour, though. You look at the bedside clock: it’s only five thirty two am.

You carefully disentangle your limbs from Brian’s, pulling the covers back up around him to conserve the heat, as you roll out of bed and go inside the bathroom to do your business.

As you’re washing your hands and rubbing your wet palms over your face, you suddenly realize there is something that is somewhat out of place. You frown as you pull your hands down and stare at your reflection, your breathing fluttering for a few long moments.

Then, with a quiet determination, you turn around, walk out of the bathroom and stand at the foot of the bed to look at him. Brian is still ensconced inside the blankets, snoring softly, unaware of your scrutiny. You leave him like this and walk over to the bedside table, silently inspecting his things: Wallet, keys, watch, a little loose change. A crumpled receipt from the takeout place close to his office. A paid traffic ticket. You feel your frown deepen.

You move to the other side of the bed, sitting down on your haunches as you carefully open the drawers. You rifle through the clothes and things there, careful so as not to wake him up, but you feel yourself getting dismayed as you close each drawer and open the next and not find what you are looking for.

Finally defeated, you get up and settle back down on the bed.

It’s gone.

The cowry-shell bracelet Brian got from Mexico, that he always wore on his right wrist, is gone. Now that you think about it, the last time you saw it on him was the night you got it back from his asshole nephew and returned it to him. You put it back on his wrist yourself. You remember how merely touching his wrist had made your heart rate speed. You remember he’d told you to go back to your boyfriend.

And now it’s gone. You stare at his sleeping form, his arms clutching the pillow you’d abandoned tightly to his chest, and try to shake the web of confusion suddenly entangling your thoughts. What has Brian done with the bracelet? Did he get rid of it, and if yes, why? Did it not hold significance to him? Wasn’t that why he’d worn it for all those years? Why did he stop wearing it after you brought it back to him? You bite your lower lip in worry, trying to steady your breathing. Could you even ask him?

You pull down the duvets and climb back into the bed again, this time moulding yourself against his back. He mumbles as he stirs awake but you press yourself closer to his warmth, kissing his neck sloppily. "Go back to sleep," you tell him as your wrap yourself around his body. "It’s early." He links his fingers through yours, shifting close to you, and promptly falls back asleep.

You listen to his breathing, feeling the steady rise and fall of his chest, and tell yourself to stay calm. Everything is all right. You have Brian. He has you. Nothing else matters.

Still, as you snuggle close to him, you have to wonder if you’re ever going to see that bracelet again.

 

*********

 

3.

 

It’s the sound of a police siren going off in the streets outside that pulls you out of your slumber.

You realize you had fallen asleep on top of the covers, wearing the same clothes you’d worn all day. There is no bedside clock in this room so you check the time with your wristwatch: Five thirty nine am. It’s the morning after your first full night in New York. You wonder what Brian is doing at this moment. Probably asleep. Hopefully, at least.

A gust of cool wind makes it’s way inside the room through the half-opened windows and you shiver. It was not as cold when you went to sleep, but it’s freezing now. You kick off the shoes and then reach over to close the window, muting the sounds of the street below.

New York weather, unpredictable just like the City itself.

You settle back under the bedclothes this time, even though you know trying to go back to sleep would be futile. Your thoughts are too jumbled, too chaotic, too much on edge. There is so much to do, to prove, to accomplish. You realize more than anyone else that conquering the art world isn’t going to be the piece of cake everyone has made it out to be. You are going to have to work your ass off.

You’re starting from scratch. You don’t have a college degree. What you do have is your own capabilities, an article by a dubiously renowned critic, and perspective.

You also have a man who loves you and who thinks you can triumph over the world just by sheer perseverance and being in the right place. He thinks New York is that place for you, and so do you. Everyone has hammered this into your heads so much now that you know you are going to have to make it work somehow. It only helps that Brian is willing to stand by you as you take on this venture. Just as he’s always stood by you in the past. Never making a big deal out of it, just supporting you, quietly, without fanfare.

As you play around with the hem of the duvet, you look at your hands and are struck by their stark bareness. You touch the empty patch of skin around the place where your ring finger meets your hand and feel a not so familiar yearning tug at your heart.

It’s not familiar because it’s not yearning linked with uncertainty at your place in Brian’s life, as it sometimes used to be in the past. Now you know you have him for good and you know you’re never losing this place again. You also know that you have the commitment that you always needed from him, the lack of which always confused you and filled you with doubts in the past. You know you are bound together for life now. You may not have been able to convince him of this last night as you packed your life and bid that sweet and heart-achingly loving farewell to him, but you are as sure of it as you are of the fact that Brian Kinney loves you with all his being.

Still, knowing that you left the rings back with him in that box makes your heart flutter with a strange pang of uncertainty.

Should you have taken your ring with you? Should you have put his on his finger and yours on your own? Was that why he’d left them out in the open? You can’t help but marvel at the fact that Brian didn’t try to keep them hidden, didn’t try to act as if they didn’t exist. That he hadn’t bought them for you and had asked you to marry him. As if putting his heart on the line for you like that hadn’t taken everything in his soul to go against every principle he had ever stood for.

He had laid himself bare for you, vulnerable and open. And you left the rings on the fucking table.

But you told him you don’t need rings or vows to know that you love each other. You’ve learnt how meaningless those symbols can be. Brian showed it to you with his selfless actions. He also knows you love him. Those rings are inconsequential, just an empty symbol of a dream you thought was yours. But now you know better. You don’t need that anymore. Neither of you do.

Still, as you hug yourself in the strange, lonely bed, feeling his suddenly overwhelming absence right in your gut, you can’t help but wonder if you’re ever going to see those rings again.

 

****  
*********  
****

 

 

New York turns out to be as unpredictable and difficult to tame as you had predicted.

First you realize that living on instant noodles is every bit as boring and tedious as your fellow starving artists had made it out to be. At least in Pittsburgh, even when you were living in that ramshackle first-ever apartment of yours, you didn’t have the high costs of New York living to consider. You got decent food at the diner, and you had money to spend even after paying the rent. Here, however, it seems every last cent you make waiting tables at the small café around the corner of Jamaica Bay, gets spent paying rent of the two bedroom apartment.

This is of course after you meet Daphne’s friend, with whom you are to share said apartment. His name is Alphonse Edmund Ermenegilde, who turns out to be a six feet nine inches tall West Indian exchange student from Jamaica. She’d told you she’d met him while going to Penn State. She never said the guy speaks fluent Dutch, French and a dialect of English that was obviously never meant to be spoken outside of the Caribbean. The English part of his lingual repertoire is torturous to your ears at best and you have no doubt this was the reason why he quit Penn State and absconded to Crown Heights to be with his fellow countrymen.

What’s worse is that while he’s not completely, irrevocably obnoxious, he’s still loud and wild and overly animated and you’re more than a little scared of him. After all, he’s so fucking tall. Daphne’s apparently told him all about you, though, and he makes endless efforts to make nice with you. He plays lurid, rambling songs on his Spanish guitar and sings them in his broken English to cheer you up when he thinks you are feeling homesick, making you want to wrench the offending instrument out of his hands and throw it out of the window. Only he’s so fucking tall.

The only good thing about the whole experience is the large window in your bedroom that overlooks part of the Flatbush Avenue, and lets in beautiful sunlight that would be perfect for the times you’d like to draw.

Right now, though, it feels as if you left your muse back in the Pitts. The only time you even feel the faintest stirrings of inspiration is when you speak to Brian at night. Hearing his voice fills up the little gaping holes in your heart and gives you your only reason to smile after the long, tedious days.

When you tell Brian you miss him, he doesn’t hesitate even for a single second and repeats the words back to you.

You realize you’re really very fucking glad to have him with you. So what if he’s in Pittsburgh? Even three hundred miles away, he’s your one constant. The one who never lied to you. The only one who never let you down.

 

*********

 

You are not really surprised to find that the New York art world doesn’t embrace you with the warmth that was predicted.

Getting noticed among the art circles in New York is no easy feat. It’s certainly no deed that could be accomplished on the strength of one mention in an art magazine. What you told Lindsay was true. You can paint anywhere in the world. It could be Pittsburgh, it could be New York, it could be fucking Timbuktu. The reason you’re here is to make your efforts while being in the place that is happening. Brian said finding success depends mostly on being in the right place at the right time and you agree with him.

Painting in Pittsburgh was like dipping in the small pond. Making it in New York is like surfing in the Atlantic Ocean. It’s what, you suspect, real success would feel like.

Thus you make it a point to browse one gallery every evening after you’re done with your shifts at the café. You become a constant presence on the various joints on Wooster Street, Hudson Street and the many breathtaking places on the 57th. You love mingling with the crowds, hearing their opinions, and talking about the techniques used in the various pieces with the enthusiasts. You may not be painting for these galleries yet, but you are at least hearing what the crowds want.

Each night after you’re finished with the gallery of the evening, you change two trains and take one bus to finally make your way back. Walking down from Eastern Parkway to Washington Boulevard, and then turning on to Crown Street, you come across small neighborhoods of various ethnicities, before the dark West Indian faces become noticeable. Every night you walk through small streets, with loud, cheerful murals painted on the chipped walls and small dark-skinned children playing in the alleys. They stop to stare at you every night as you pass them. You wonder how you must look to them. A white boy in a neighborhood filled with West Indians on one side and the biggest community of Hasidic Jews in the world on the other.

One night during your fifth week in New York, as you’re walking back to the apartment, you notice a group of artists working on a mural on a wall. You halt in your step, and shuffle closer to observe what they’re painting. As you watch them closely, it becomes apparent to you that they are not painting a new mural, but are in fact restoring an old one. It is one of the pieces that you’d noticed before which was in particularly bad condition. The wall is cracked from one side and the cement is chipping away from most of the places, taking away with it part of the mural that was undoubtedly very lovingly painted many years ago. You watch them work for a long time that night: sandpapering old peeling paint, cleaning the dust and grime plastered onto the wall. They aren’t repainting it at the moment, only cleaning the surface, seemingly making it ready for the actual restoration process.

When you come back to your room that night, it’s almost after midnight, but you’re buzzing with a strange, new energy. You sit down on your bed for a minute and then you get up and move to the window to stare out at the moonlit night, the streets still alive with the sounds of a New York night. You move to the side table and aimlessly open and close drawers, not knowing what you are actually looking for. You sit on the bed again, your thoughts flying without direction. You frown at the wall in front of you for a second, before standing up again and this time moving to the easel placed in front of the window. Brian had sent this as a gift three days after you moved here and it has been standing here since then – untouched.

You stare at the covered canvas for a long moment and then taking a deep breath, you lift the plastic sheet away, baring the blank canvas for the first time. Your eyes move to the window again, as you think of the beautiful mural and the artists restoring it -- cleaning the surface, sandpapering the flaws, removing the grime. Your hands lift to touch the canvas as your eyes close, your thoughts filled with the image of the mural as your fingers trace a seemingly random pattern on the unblemished surface, as if painting an image only you can see.

That moment passes, and you open your eyes and stare at the canvas. It’s still empty, the brush strokes you made existing only in your head. But you still feel a smile beginning at the corners of your mouth.

It’s only a blank canvas. But you have the means to make it anything you want it to be.

It’s all in your hands.

 

*********

 

Seven weeks after you leave Pittsburgh, Brian surprises you with a three days visit to New York.

You haven’t been back to the Pitts even once, although you’ve spoken to Brian every single night. It’s not even been two months and you’re already broke, still stuck in the hovel with Alphonse. You have no face to show back in the Pitts at this point in time, you feel. So when you see Brian at your door on a Thursday night, you can’t help but throw your arms around him and kiss him repeatedly, your heart bursting with happiness. You can’t wait for Brian to make some snide remark about the general state of your existence and then whisk you away to some luxury hotel suite where you can soak your bones in a hot Jacuzzi and sleep on an actual bed. To your utter disbelief, however, Brian seems to have neither such plans nor any apparent reservations about crashing on your single bed with you.

After the marathon reunion sex that lasts nearly the whole night, you expect Brian to wake up complaining of his aching neck and cramping joints for having to sleep in the tiny bed, mocking the peeling paint on the walls, and grumbling about the greasy food you undoubtedly consume nightly and which he would surely be afraid you’d poison him with soon enough.

Again, to your shock, he does none of these things. Instead, he drags you to the kitchen and tells you to make him breakfast.

You feed him sugar-coated, high-in-calories, cocoa and nut crunchies just to spite him but he only glares at you for two seconds before mumbling something about burning them off on your ass tonight as he grabs a spoon.

You are pouring coffee for you both when the door to the other bedroom opens and Alphonse comes out. You watch in some amusement as Brian pauses for a split-second during mid-bite as they size each other up, undoubtedly shaken by the West Indian’s size. There is a fishy leer on Alphonse’s face as he looks at first Brian, then you, and you feel your eyes narrow in suspicion. You know the leer is not because your boyfriend is drop dead gorgeous and the Jamaican has any kind of interest in him, but for some altogether different reason you haven’t been able to grasp as yet. You notice Brian looking at you from the corner of your eyes and that is the exact moment he relaxes, lifting his spoon to starts eating again, one brow raised in quiet enquiry.

"Please," you mumble. "He’s as straight as they come."

Brian snorts as he reaches for his coffee, watching the tall man open the fridge door. "That’s what they all say."

Suddenly Alphonse turns around and gawks at the two of you. "Is which one a unnu heat mi hegg?"

You roll your eyes as you consider how you are going to attempt to decipher the alien query this time. It is the same thing every morning. Alphonse apparently can understand every word you say but you’d be damned if you could decipher even fifteen percent of what he blabs out to you during the course of a normal day. How to handle this now, you wonder?

"Mmm." Brian looks at him curiously and then shrugs. "Neither of us."

Huh? You look at your boyfriend. "What did you say?"

"He was asking if we’d eaten his eggs," Brian tells you. "I told him we hadn’t."

Your mouth drops open. "How the fuck did you know he said that?"

Brian stares at you. "I just listened to what he’s saying, Sunshine."

"But it makes no sense what he says," you try to explain.

You see his lips twist in amusement. "It would if you were paying attention."

"Cuyah," Alphonse speaks again, his voice rising in excitement as he points at you animatedly. "He gwan like he nice eee."

Brian starts chuckling. "Yeah, I know, he does."

"I what?" You stare at him in disbelief. "What did you tell him?"

"Um," Brian pauses, a grin playing on his lips, as he considers. "Uh, he said you always say such nice things to him, Sunshine."

You know he’s bullshitting now. "He didn’t say that."

"How would you know?" Brian shrugs. "You just said you can’t understand what he says."

You hit his hand with your spoon. "Because I never say nice things to him."

"Hey." Brian pulls his hand back, a mock-frown on his face. "You’ll pay for that!" he growls.

It doesn’t help that Alphonse considers all of it to be some kind of a joke and starts laughing. "Yu man begs fa jooks," he says, chuckling, his big white teeth visible. "Im des fi a slam."

You stare at him dumbfounded as Brian snorts next to you.

"Bad like yaz, mon!." Alphonse guffaws, slapping his thighs at the hilarity of it all.

You feel your teeth grit. "What the hell is he saying now?"

"How the fuck should I know?" Brian chuckles unabashedly.

"BRIAN!" You reach out to hit him with the spoon again but he grabs your hand instead and pulls you closer.

"My guess is," he whispers in your ear. "He’s saying he now knows how hard you beg for me to fuck you."

Jesus. "No, he isn’t." You feel like rolling your eyes again.

"Sunshine," Brian drawls. "He heard more than he wanted to last night."

You look at him, a wicked smile playing on his face, and then you look at Alphonse, who’s laughing at both of you, now making outlandishly vulgar gestures with his big hands, and you suddenly realize that Brian is right. You were so fucking horny to see him last night, it never even occurred to you that the walls in this apartment are even thinner than the ones in Deb’s house.

"Fuck!" You shake your head. "I mean..." You stare at Brian and repeat. "Fuck."

"That..." He smirks at you as he puts his mug back on the table. "...seems like a very good idea." He takes your spoon out of your hand, puts it on the table, takes your hand and leads you back to the bedroom.

"BAD LIKE YAZ, MON!" You hear Alphonse call out to Brian as you kick the door closed and lock it.

"Fuck," you tell Brian as he pushes you back against the closed door, grins widely and then covers your mouth with his own.

 

*********

 

You tell Brian you haven’t gone dancing in ages and feel like doing tonight, so the two of you head out to Chelsea.

You hop bars and clubs on 6th, 7th and 8th Avenues all night long, all the places filled with beautiful, hard-bodied jocks and hot naked men cruising you both. You dance with Brian under the piercing laser beams, flashing lights and falling confetti, grinding against him as he kisses you hotly, and then let him fuck you against a dark moldy wall in a backroom made up like a dungeon.

You drink more than you should and dance longer than you’d planned, and when you’re feeling too hot and high, and your senses are buzzing, and sweat is prickling down your neck and back, and you can feel Brian rubbing his crotch against your ass at the bar, you grab his arm and lead him back to the apartment. You strip in record time, kissing him hungrily, his teeth biting your lips, and you push him down to the bed and ride him so hard that you almost pass out when you come.

You wake up with your tongue plastered to the roof of your mouth, your drool pooling on Brian’s chest, and the biggest hangover you’ve ever had splitting your head.

You hear Brian groan as he stirs awake, pulling the pillow over his eyes to hide from the offending sunlight and know he’s doing no better than you.

You run your hands down his arms, the silky hard feeling of his muscles the only pleasure you can endure at this moment, and mumble,

"We must do this more often."

 

*********

 

That evening, you drag Brian to a showing on indigenous art from the Americas at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and he lets you.

You’re kind of surprised that Brian has basically let you do anything you have wanted to since he’s come. He hasn’t complained about the food, the housing, or anything else. He hasn’t made any demands of any kind whatsoever.

It’s after you’ve done the museum tour and are taking a walk along the boundary of Long Meadows that he nudges you with his shoulder, slipping his left arm around your waist.

"You happy here?" he asks.

You glance at him as you match his strides, covering his hand with yours. "In New York?"

"Nah." He shakes his head. "I mean this neighborhood." He looks at you for a second and then forward again. "It isn’t exactly the safest place to be, you know."

"Oh." You think of Alphonse playing his stupid songs to make you smile. You think of the busy street corners and the dark-skinned children stopping their games to stare at you as you walk through them. You think of paint and varnish, cleaning rags, grime filled walls and dark hands carrying sandpaper and brushes. And then you look up Brian and smile. "Yeah. I like it here."

He stares at you closely, his eyes staring into yours deeply, as if analyzing your statement. Then he slowly nods, a strange look on his face. "Okay."

He pulls you closer as the two of you continue walking through the streets.

 

*********

 

The last evening of Brian’s stay in New York, you take him to see the mural.

He keeps quiet and out of your way, simply observing from a distance, as you join the other artists on the pavement. You take out your supplies from your messenger bag: brushes, varnish, paint, cleaning rags. In the past few weeks, they’ve moved on from sandpapering and cleaning to applying a base coat on the entire layer of the mural. It’s a long, hard process, considering how many places the wall has been chipped and will need the cracks to be filled in with a mixture of plaster of paris and cement.

Édouard, one of the more experienced conservators –you find not all of them are artists– a stocky ruddy-skinned, white haired man from the Czech Republic, shows you a section that has been recently filled, and you set down to cover it with the base coat. You spend a couple of hours on the section -- almost forgetting that Brian is there with you, so engrossing the work is. When you finally look up, you find Brian sitting on the steps of a small store, watching you intently, a smile playing on his lips. You straighten up and stretch, smiling at him, a quiet feeling of content filling you.

You’re not sure whether its because of the night’s work or because of the fact that Brian sat there waiting for you with so much patience. But you’re pleased for it nonetheless.

Later that night, you show him the painting you’ve been working on for the last week or so. It’s not complete but as you explain to him, inspiration has hit you in a hurry in the last few weeks and you’ve made some very fast progress on it in very little time.

Brian studies it closely, his face set in concentration, and you feel your heart thumping in anticipation. It is an abstract image, a blending of bold strokes in vivid colors that called to you in a way no image has ever done before. If you look at it at just a glance, it seems like nothing more than a striking fusion of reds and blues and orange, bordered by dark grayish strokes on the bottom to give it perspective. But is that all there is to see? Is that all that Brian would see?

You watch him intently, his head tilted to one side, as he looks at every stroke, his eyes seemingly following the same journey your brush had taken, noticing the lighter shades and the darker hues. Suddenly, after what seems like long moments, his eyes sparkle and he takes a step back, recognition finally dawning on his face.

"It’s the mural," he exclaims. "It’s the painting of the mural you were working on."

A smile breaks on your face as you step forward to take him in your arms, kissing him thoroughly for understanding.

"Yes it is," you murmur against his throat and let him hold you, standing in the middle of the room in front of the half-done canvas.

A blank canvas is whatever you make of it.

And you intend to make yours worthwhile.

 

*********

 

After Brian’s trip, it becomes easier to go back to Pittsburgh to visit.

You make use of each and every public holiday to hop the greyhound and show up on Brian’s doorstep. Fourth of July. Labor Day. Thanksgiving. Deb leaves a place for you on her table on every occasion that you can show up at and on some that you can’t.

You fail to make it on Christmas because you lose your job two weeks before the holidays and can’t make even the bus ticket, let alone that month’s rent. You feel too embarrassed to tell anyone about it and decide just not to show up. Afterwards, when you speak to everyone on the phone, your mother is understandably upset. However, it’s Deb who berates you for so long and so loudly that you vow never to make the same mistake again.

Brian tells you to stop acting like a fucking princess and let him cover for you at times like these and you realize you must not be only one who was berated by Deb.

 

*********

 

In the second week of February, after your job has been restored and you are feeling somewhat back on your feet, Brian takes you to London with him for two days. He has a presentation to give to a large fashion house and says you could use a break. You can’t help but agree with him.

It’s not the first time you’ve been to London. You remember a childhood vacation you took with your parents when you were very young, before Molly was even born, but you barely have any memories of what you did.

This time, though, even though Brian is busy during the two days with his clients, you decide to explore London on your own. You know you don’t have enough time to see everything but you can hit some of the highlights if you are smart enough.

So you get day passes for the London Underground for the two days, and hit the streets on foot. Walking around Leicester Square exploring the music stores and small pubs along its four sides, browsing through the art supplies and antiques stores on Oxford Street, and visiting the Tate Modern on the South Bank of the Thames, you feel like you’re in heaven. London is beautiful and it’s devotion to the last Century through art even more so.

At nights, before hitting the clubs, you and Brian check out the fashion stores on Bond Street and the world famous haunts around Knightsbridge, because he proclaims he simply can’t go back to the Pitts without doing some serious shopping.

Brian is the biggest label queen you have ever come across and it’s always fascinating to watch him in serious shopping mode. You follow him from one designer label to another, watching him buy something from every single place, the cartons and bags piling up as you exit each store. You wonder how much overweight charge he’ll have to pay to take everything back home.

You try to wriggle out when he forces you to try on designer jeans and beautiful shirts at Canali and Pal Zileri but he simply tells you to shut up as he pays for three pairs of jeans, six shirts and a pair of dress trousers.

He says you will need better clothes than your fucking chinos and worn out track pants when you start making the rounds of the big galleries in Manhattan.

You punch him on his arm as you make your way out of the shop and tell him you won’t need any clothes at all for what you want to do with him tonight, and he smiles.

 

*********

 

Brian gets the London account and lands a meeting with a big New York catering firm in the same week, and comes to celebrate with you.

That same weekend, you are introduced to the owner of a small, chic gallery on 23rd Street. She looks at your work, paying close attention to your more recent stuff –her gaze especially lingering on the mural painting– and tells you that if you come back to her when you have a few more pieces to show, she would consider giving you a spot at her gallery. There are a few exhibitions coming up at her place in the next few months, she says, and there could be some possibility for showing some of your work there.

Your senses thrumming with excitement, you greet Brian with an extremely hot blowjob that night in his hotel room. He says you should meet more gallery owners when he visits you.

You tell him he should just visit you more often, that’s all. Good things happen to you when he’s around.

 

*********


	2. Chapter 2

As time passes, however, you find that while you are away, Pittsburgh has been transforming into a place that isn’t as familiar as it once used to be.

Your second year in New York, your mother meets a lawyer from Chicago and they get married. He has a big practice going where he lives and asks her to move to Chicago with him. She agrees. When you ask her, she says it’s because Molly’s soon going out of state to boarding school and with you being in New York, there isn’t enough incentive for her to stay in Pittsburgh. You’re happy for her. Tucker had been history for a while and while you had learned to tolerate him in the last couple of years, this guy seems much more appropriate to you.

With her no longer in Pittsburgh, you find going back home a little strange with every visit. It’s still home to you, it’s still the place you lived in, with all the memories of growing up and becoming a man there. Meeting Brian and falling in love with him. You realize that going to Pittsburgh just for Brian should be enough reason for it to be okay, but as it turns out, you see him more often in New York than in the Pitts.

You suspect Pittsburgh has become a strange place for him as well.

With you now in New York and with Gus in Toronto, it seems the only thing keeping him there is Kinnetik.

You can see his rationale behind the race to acquire accounts all over the States, with a clear focus on the New York clientele. Kinnetik has good standing in the Pitts and Brian is a genius when it comes to innovative campaigns. Your foray into advertising may have been brief but you understand competition. You understand that like any other profession, in the cutthroat world of Advertising too, if you really want to win, you have to be willing to come with something unique, something that contains that extra oomph that would attract the customer.

Brian has that oomph. He understands what sells and he understands what he’s competing against. You can’t be happier to know that his focus is New York, the place where you are. The truth of the matter is: Brian always wanted to move to New York. Ever since you’ve known him. He tried before when he got the offer from that place in Manhattan but for whatever reason, it didn’t work out. Now he’s got his own successful firm, which means this time, he’s the one calling the shots.

The recent run of high profile meetings he’s had with big clients is evidence enough that he’s moving in the right direction.

Everyone knows Brian Kinney in charge is a very sexy creature.

 

*********

 

As it so happens, you have enough pieces done by July that you show them to not one but four gallery owners to pique their interest and get your lucky break when two of them give you spots for five and eight paintings respectively. One of them is the woman who owns the gallery on 23rd Street. Thus, you are booked for two shows at two different galleries during the same week.

Brian comes to both shows, of course, and so does your mother with the lawyer hubby from Chicago. From the Pittsburgh crowd, Emmett shows up with his latest sweetheart, but the rest of them can’t get away on time. You get long congratulatory phone calls from them, though, and that is enough for now. Lindsay has flowers delivered from Toronto with apologies on not making it but you tell her you understand. It’s hard to get away when you have kids to consider.

Both shows are very successful and six of your paintings are sold. You even get a few mentions in the local art rags.

Brian says the New York art scene that had been in hibernation since your exodus from the Pitts has finally woken up.

You tell him it’s only the beginning and you can hear his smile on the phone when he says he knows that.

He says your days of catching the small fry are over. You’re hunting the big game now.

 

*********

 

In retrospect, you’re not surprised to find that tricking is not the bogeyman it once was.

In the past, you always thought you were not into tricking as much as Brian was. Everyone kept telling you how hard it must be to make this thing work with Brian since he was so difficult to deal with, so opposite to you in temperament. Everyone –Michael, Deb, Lindsay– kept repeating the age-old mantra that Brian was anti-relationship, that he didn’t do boyfriends, that he was fucked up beyond all comprehension. They said it for so long and so often, and with such persistence, that a time came when, like a fool, you actually started to believe it.

You stopped considering the significance of how far Brian had come with you, and started looking for things that didn’t mean anything. You started looking for proof when the evidence was laid out right before you, in plain sight. In every action he took, in every step he chose, Brian showed you that he was bound to you. But you were too busy listening to other people’s denunciations to pay attention.

It didn’t help that, at the time, you seemed to make as much noise about commitment and monogamy as Brian did about orgies and fucking. Neither of you helped the cause by being so completely contrary to the other’s ideals.

It took Babylon blowing up and Brian bending himself backwards to prove his love for you to realize that you always had the biggest parts of him and that you didn’t need for him to abandon everything that made him the man he was to know that he loved you.

You know better now. You know that words don’t mean shit if they’re not followed by actions. Brian has always given you actions.

He tells you there are to be no rules this time.

He knows you love him. Plus, as you had so accurately predicted when you left for New York, that despite the distance, you do see each other all the time. What else could either of you possibly want? If you want to fuck someone more than once or exchange numbers, it is your discretion. As long as your heart is with him, that is all that matters.

You agree with him and tell him the same stands true for himself as well. You know this, though: You will not kiss anyone else on the lips. That is one rule you broke one too many times in the past and don’t plan on breaking ever again. Of course, you suspect he still doesn’t fuck anyone more than once. Or exchange numbers. You also haven’t tasted anyone else on his lips since the night you enacted the rules on both of you. And then went around breaking each and everyone of them.

But you don’t want to think of what went wrong in the past now. You know you’ve made mistakes before and so has he. The trick is not to make the same mistakes again.

As you spend a couple hours everyday helping out at the murals in Crown Heights, and then each night working on your own paintings for the next show, you realize you may have grown up just a bit since you left Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh isn’t the only place that has been transforming since you left.

You’ve all grown up in the last few years.

 

*********

 

The summer show sales give you enough money to bid farewell to Alphonse’s dump and move to a better place in the Village.

You don’t bid farewell to Alphonse, though. At some point in time during the last two years, his eccentricities stopped getting on your nerves and you actually started getting along with him. It’s good to have a friend in Crown Height to meet up with when you come to work on the murals now.

In January, just after the Christmas holidays, Brian spends two weeks in New York, giving presentations to three new prospective clients. He already has enough accounts in the City to warrant spending a good portion of every month here, but if there are bigger and better options to strive for, he won’t say no.

One night, as you are laying in bed with him in your new apartment, the fan above cooling the sweat on your skin after the particularly exuberant round of sex, you press closer to his back, wrapping your fingers around his biceps.

"Brian?" You mumble against his shoulder.

He’s busy playing with the cool covers, the back of his thighs rubbing against yours. "Hmm."

You link your fingers through his. "Does it gets tiring commuting from Pittsburgh to New York for business all the time?"

He pauses in his motion for a second and then continues. "It’s not tiring. It’s challenging."

You move your hand to his chest, soothing the skin over his heart with your fingers. "But it can be hectic, right? With business being so good for Kinnetik lately."

He doesn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then he shrugs. "There’s nothing left there now."

"Where?"

"The Pitts." He sounds tired. "It was always the dump. Now it’s just become unbearable."

You frown into his skin. "But it’s home. Our family is still there."

"Your family is scattered all over the place," he drawls. "Your mom is in Chicago. Your sister is away at school."

"Deb is there. Michael is there."

He pauses again and this time you feel an unfamiliar tension in his body. You knew that, for reasons still unclear to you, Brian and Michael had grown apart your last year in Pittsburgh. But you had thought all that had changed after the bomb. Michael had come and made up with Brian. Things had been getting back to where they had been in the old days when you left.

Or hadn’t they?

"What?" You ask softly.

"Yeah well," Brian continues in the same nonchalant drawl. "Michael has his own life, his own ... family to be with."

It suddenly occurs to you that perhaps, despite their efforts to forget the tensions from that last year for the sake of their friendship, the Brian and Mikey Show had not been able to run its full course after all. Not everything can be mended, or restored to its former condition, you imagine, if it’s not meant to be. Sometimes friendships are broken and no matter how hard you try, they can never be the same again.

Something went wrong between Brian and Michael somewhere along the way. You don’t know what it was, but you’d be damned if you were going to drag Brian back to that place in his head.

"Well, Ted and Emmett are there." You splay your hands over his heart again, trying to soothe the newly formed tension in his skin. "Your work is there. It’s still home."

He relaxes but shrugs. "It’s just a place, Justin. It’s not home."

You kiss his shoulder. "I know you miss Gus."

He pauses again and you know this time it’s because he knows it’s the truth. But he’s still Brian, still the king of denial. "He’s better off where he is."

If you were lying face to face with him, you’d grab his shoulders and shake him. But since you are lying behind him, you do the next best thing. You bite his shoulder. Hard.

"Ow." He jerks away from you, cursing. "Fucker."

You bite the shoulder again, holding his arms, locking your fingers around his muscles.

"HEY!"

"I’ll keep doing it."

"What the fuck?"

"As long as you keep up the denial."

"Fucker." He curses again but there’s no sting in his words.

"Admit it."

"You’re a little shit, you know that." He tries to push you away, or turn around so that he can face you and possibly enact revenge, but you won’t let him budge.

You mouth his shoulder this time, kissing the point where you had bitten him, your tongue lapping at the reddened skin, soothing the hurt. "You miss your son," you murmur in his ear. "I know it. The whole world knows it. You might as well admit it."

You finally feel him relax in your arms. "All right. So I miss him. But you’re wrong about one thing, Sunshine." His voice is quiet. "The whole world doesn’t know it. The whole world doesn’t even give a shit."

You think of the last time Gus came to stay with Brian. It was during last December, for five days. Brian has been to see him a couple times on weekends since then, but a couple of weekends in a year is not enough time to spend with your son. Despite all of Lindsay’s promises, Gus doesn’t get to spend nearly as much time with his father as a young boy his age ought to. It is true: Brian really does miss his son very much.

You kiss the back of Brian’s neck, trying to distract him now – feeling bad about getting him in this mood. "I give a shit."

Brian sighs, wrapping his fingers around yours. "You might be the only one."

You squeeze your hands together and kiss him on his cheek.

"My vote is a very big one."

 

*********

 

On the next Memorial Day weekend, you take a break from work and come for ten days to Pittsburgh. Lindsay and Melanie are in town with the kids for a couple of weeks and since you haven’t seen them in a while, you really want to spend some time with them.

While you’re there, you agree to spend some time working with Michael on the new issue of Rage. Gus is with Brian for the weekend and JR is with Michael and Ben. Of course, Michael doesn’t want to be parted from his daughter for even a second, so when you meet him up at the store, you find her there as well -- sitting in her high chair, as Michael feeds her from a bowl.

You watch, amused, as Michael makes baby talk with his two and a half years old. She’s now old enough to be let down on her own but Michael still treats her like a baby.

"Ever since I’ve come to Pittsburgh, I’ve been seeing fathers reuniting with their long lost children." You smile at them. "You here, Brian and Gus at the loft. Brian was helping Gus with, get this, his math homework."

"Well, good for Gussie Boy." Michael drawls, watching his daughter smile at her brother’s name. "Too bad Gussie can’t spend more time with Uncle Brian, huh?" He continues, scooping another bite of whatever it is he’s feeding her and taking the plastic spoon into her mouth, as you begin taking out the story boards you had worked on the previous night. "Well, we’ll let him spend all the time he can before he goes away to Toronto. Who knows when would be the next time that Uncle Brian would bother taking time out for Gussie again?"

You freeze in mid-action as the words slice through you. You turn to stare at Michael. He’s still busy feeding his daughter, unaware of your reaction. You put the boards down and take a deep breath.

"Brian misses him too, you know."

Michael looks up from his task for a second, throwing you a strange look before returning to the spoon. "Sure he does."

You fold your arms on your chest. "So where does the ‘Who knows when Brian would bother taking time out for his son’ come from?"

Michael scowls but doesn’t look at you. "Oh come on, Justin. You know Brian doesn’t give that much of a deal about Gus."

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

"Hey!" Michael throws the spoon down and hurries to cover his daughter’s ears. "Watch the language. I don’t care what kind of language you guys use in front of Gus, but I won’t accept the same treatment for my daughter."

"Fuck you, Michael." You snap at him, suddenly feeling out of control. "You know we don’t do that to Gus. Brian would never do that to Gus. But you obviously don’t know shit about Brian. You’re one of the people who thinks he doesn’t even give a damn about his son."

Michael’s hands are now glued to his daughter’s ears as he grits his teeth. "I know Brian better than you, mister. I know he’d rather get his dick sucked than take two weeks out of the year to go see his son."

Two weeks. Ah, now you know what this is all about. In December, right before the Christmas frenzy, while Brian was busy with four new accounts, two of them in New York and one in Chicago, Michael and Ben went to spend two weeks with Mel and Lindsay and the kids in Toronto. You suspect Mel had something to say about this to Michael and it’s obviously been brewing since then.

It is at times like these that you begin to understand Brian’s isolation from the Novotny-Bruckner household. In their perfect little world, nothing ever changes. People don’t evolve, situations remain stagnant. Everything stays the same.

"Michael," you speak firmly, trying to calm yourself down. "Brian has a business to run. He sees Gus as much as he can. You can’t expect him to take time out the way you or Ben can. He’s the owner of a growing company, he doesn’t get vacation breaks whenever he wants."

"No, but he gets fuck breaks at Babylon whenever he wants." Michael glares at you and you know it’s Melanie’s opinion being repeated – word for word.

"You know what, it doesn’t matter." You grab the storyboards and start putting them back in the folder you had taken them out from. "This is obviously not the right time to interact with you. I’ll come back once you’ve reevaluated your opinion about my boyfriend and your best friend." You finish packing your stuff. "Until then, you should just... feed your daughter."

There is barely a moment’s pause before Michael starts again. "Look, Justin, I know he proposed to you, all right?" You don’t look at him as you move towards the door, determined to ignore him. "I know he made a grand gesture with rings and all the shit you wanted from him." You don’t want to hear this, don’t want to hear about the rings that you left on that table two years back, you think, as you open the door and make a move to get out. "But just because he went through a momentary phase of insanity, doesn’t mean he was ready to commit."

You halt inside the door, standing with one foot out and one inside, your heart hammering in your chest, and then you slowly turn around to face him again.

"It was just a phase." Michael says. "I know Brian loves you but I also know he doesn’t do commitments or responsibilities. I know it, he knows it." He stares at you. "It’s time you figured it out as well."

You stare at him a long moment, hoping your face doesn’t betray the emotions brewing inside you, before turning once again to finally move out of the store.

This time you let the door close shut behind you.

 

*********

 

There is a forty-three years old mural on the corner of Bleecker Street and Seventh Avenue, painted by a Russian artist who migrated from Ukraine in the Fifties.

In the past few years, the beautiful painting has lost some of its luster due to pollution and environmental damage. Édouard Ferdinand, the Czech conservator you’ve now known for the last two years, is heading the team that plans to restore it to its previous glory. He is always happy to see you wanting to help in these projects. He says he is proud of the fact that an up and coming artist with actual work to show in galleries is interested in this work—which he calls a thankless job. You know what he means.

You are always given flexibility in the times you can join in their efforts, since your work is always voluntary and you are not a professional conservator. Many other young artists and art lovers do similar voluntary work on these murals and it’s during one of these days that you meet Stan.

He is a French Canadian architecture student who’s apprenticed with some of the most accomplished painting conservators in the States.

Your gaydar pings the moment you see him. He looks up at you and smiles appreciatively, reaching out to shake hands with you, his eyes twinkling. He’s slender, around your height, and with reddish blond hair, light brown eyes and a full mouth. He’s definitely fuckable, you think, almost hearing Brian agreeing with you in your head, as you smile at him.

You find out that he’s been in the States for the last eight months, first studying in Houston, then Boston and now finally moving to New York this month. He’s staying with a gay couple whom he met in Houston and that moved to New York last month. He says he had a boyfriend in Boston but that they broke up two months back and now he vows never to fall for anyone else again. It’s better to keep things confined to fucking, he says, everything else gets too complicated.

That night, when you take Stan out to a bar in Chelsea, you tell him about Brian. He seems intrigued by the stories you have to tell about your lover, and with the fact that you have an open relationship. He can’t get over the fact that someone can have a real life boyfriend and still go around fucking other guys without having it cause trouble on the home front.

Later that night, when he’s lying naked and spread on all fours on his bed, and you’re fucking him hard and fast from behind, you hope for his own good that the notion no longer causes him any doubts.

 

*********

 

In July, you take a break from murals when you land your first solo spot on a show coming up in September.

The gallery, which is situated on 21st Street is very famous, and as you work on getting the last of the canvases ready for the opening you start feeling the pressure on your nerves. This is what it seems you’ve spent the last three years working towards. Your very own show. It could either make you or break you.

Brian, who for a change has been stuck in Pittsburgh for the past few weeks catering to a high-maintenance client, is all calm nerves and assuring words.

"You’ll do great, Sunshine. Now I want you to remember that while it’s okay to work hard," he speaks through the speakerphone, as you apply varnish on a large canvas, "it’s equally as important to keep taking frequent breaks to blow off steam."

"Yeah, steam," you grumble distractedly, selecting a large brush to start with for now. "I think I’ve got that part covered."

"Oh, I am sure you have, dear." He laughs. "One of your mural buddies, I presume."

You smile at his clowning tone, the thought of Stan’s admittance into your circle of fucks entering your mind and then leaving just as quickly, as you start mixing paints on the palette. "You can say that." You shake your head. You don’t know how he does that. Somehow he always seems to know what’s happening in your life, without even needing to be told. Must be ESP.

"Well, at least you seem to have the means to keep yourself amused at your disposal," he sighs exaggeratedly. "I, on the other hand, am absolutely ready to commit genocide. That asshole client has made life hell for me in the last ten days," he complains. "And to make it worse, he isn’t even remotely fuckable."

Brian speaks with you for a long time that night, talking to you about mundane things while you continue working on the canvas.

Apparently, hearing your voice while he’s stressed out about work is his way of blowing off steam.

 

*********

 

The gay couple that Stan lives with gets married and Stan invites you to attend the commitment ceremony.

They are medical students who studied and graduated together and are now interning at the same hospital together. You want to laugh at their idealism. Getting married at fucking twenty-four years old, in this day and age. But then you are reminded of your own ideals not too long ago, those inane and unrealistic dreams you’d harbored of being with Brian. What was it that he had called them in front of Michael: white picket fences, marriage and babies? Insane.

Watching the young couple exchange sparkling gold rings and kisses makes you wish you hadn’t come to this stupid ceremony in the first place. Everything reminds you of the time when you too had wished for this idealized version of domestic bliss, reminds you of the time when you had almost gotten that version with the man you love, and then it reminds you of the time you had walked away from it all.

You drink one too many glasses of champagne, earning yourself a good head buzz, and while everyone else is enjoying the buffet, you slip into the men’s room to clean up. You stare at your reflection, your eyes dilated with the high and your heart aching for some reason, and wish Brian were here to make it all better.

You go into the bathroom to relieve yourself and when you come out, you find Stan standing in front of mirrors, checking his hair.

"Hey man, you feeling okay?" he asks.

"Sure," you reply, moving to the sink to wash your hands.

As you’re closing the tap, you feel one of his hands on your hip and stare at his reflection in the mirror. He’s wearing a coffee shirt and navy trousers and carries the colors nicely. You look him down slowly from head to toe and he gets the message, moving forward to press against your back, his erection poking your hip from behind his clothes.

You fuck him inside one of the stalls, pressing him face first against the side wall. You grab his hips and close you eyes as you drive into him, and each time you thrust inside, you dream of chestnut hair and hazel eyes.

 

*********

 

Your first solo show in New York opens with much fanfare and is deemed an instant hit.

Brian is there opening night, ready and willing to play the part of the perfect partner. Your heart flutters to have him with you, you beautiful, successful lover, walking by each exhibit hand in hand with you.

All your friends from among the mural gang are there. Édouard. Alphonse. Stan. Brian has met almost everyone of them except Stan, but for some reason you don’t let him near Brian. You tell yourself it’s because he’s a repeat fuck, and while you can fuck anyone more than once if you wanted, you are not going to bring them to your boyfriend for introduction.

When the first night closes in what are in fact the early hours of the next morning, the two of you return to the apartment and collapse into bed, too tired and strung out to fuck. You just strip and snuggle closer under the covers, holding each other close.

Right before you slip into sleep, Brian tells you he has some free time coming up before Christmas and asks if you’d like to go away somewhere on a break, like Bahamas?

You murmur your assent and fall asleep with your head on his chest, dreaming of fucking Brian on a beautiful white beach.

 

*********

 

In the last week of October, when you’re relatively free from slaving away for gallery shows, Édouard invites you to accompany his team to a restoration site at an old abandoned Church in Buenos Aires.

It’s a three-month long stint, which was started in the beginning of September by a group of Argentinean conservators, and Édouard and his team are to join them in the last four weeks, to help them wrap up the work.

You’re ecstatic as you call to tell Brian, and just as expected, he’s delighted for you. However, he tells you that Ted and Blake are tying the knot in December, so your vacation plans together will have to be adjusted accordingly. There’s no way he’s going to bear the wrath of Deb’s anger if you are not present at the ceremony, he says.

You almost want to tell him to fuck the wedding, that you want to get the hell out of there with him. But somehow you don’t think he’ll understand your reasoning at such short notice.

The whole world has gone crazy, you decide. Ted and Blake, you shake your head in amazement. They are getting married at the end of the second week of December, which was the planned time of your getaway with Brian. So now the vacation has moved to the Fifteenth, exactly a day after their wedding.

"Theodore and his twink are getting married," Brian snorts. "And we are the ones going on the honeymoon."

Your answering laugh sounds hollow to your own ears.

 

*********

 

The plane lands in Buenos Aires to pleasantly mild weather and clear skies.

Your team’s home base is a small hotel in Puerto Madero, a fast moving and busy shopping district at the heart of the city.

Édouard tells everyone to chill out and relax for a couple of days, as he plans on starting work from the coming Monday. So you and a group of friends, which includes Stan, hang out at Caminito the first night, the colorful walkway in La Boca dominated by tango dancers and artisans, before moving on to the pricey nightclubs at Puerto Madero.

The next day, you and Sheryl, one of the art students from NYU who is part of the team, spend the whole day at Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, studying the beautiful, rare works of some of the most renowned European masters from the pre-Renaissance era.

Monday morning, your team of ten is loaded onto an air-conditioned coaster and taken just outside the city, to the south, to the renovation site inside an old Spanish Church.

Édouard says the Church is more than a hundred years old and the Argentinean government has declared most of the structure a national monument, cordoning it off to public access, with efforts to preserve its architecture and to restore it to its past magnificence on the way. A portion of it, however, has been made accessible to the conservators with the blessings of the Ministry of Culture, so they can work inside on the project.

The team makes its way inside, Édouard greeting members of the Argentinean teams, as you look at the aged but not yet crumbling walls of the building – the structure reminiscent of old Spanish Colonial architecture. As you step into the foyer and look up at the wall, you suddenly stop breathing for a second, finally understanding why you are here.

The mural is not as long or sprawling as some of the walls you’d worked on in New York were, but it’s magnificently painted – the details vivid and commanding, making you realize that you’re in the presence of a masterpiece.

It’s a depiction of "the Last Supper" and you and your team are here to try and restore it back to it’s past grandeur.

You can see the team that has already been working here has completed a large portion of the preservation work. A portion of the wall that seems to have disintegrated with age, has been replaced with a lining of mortar and brick, the new surface now being smoothed and varnished by two conservators. Most of the remaining surface is covered with scratches and marks left by passing time but you don’t see anyone sandpapering the peeling paint here. This piece of art is apparently too rare to sandpaper away. Restoring it would mean using the minimum of force and the maximum of caution to preserve its original form as much as possible.

That afternoon, after unpacking your gear, you join the Spanish speaking local workers with your varnish and cleaning rags, and settle down to the job.

Time moves fast, especially with the hard work and the long hours, and you return each night to your hotel room and collapse onto your bed in exhaustion. You speak to Brian once every few days, telling him about your work and the sights you see. You can tell that his schedule has been keeping him busy too. He tells you he has a conference to attend in Los Angeles on the Tenth of December but will be back right before Ted’s reception.

"You better," you warn him. "Or Deb will have your remaining ball."

He says he has no plans to stand in the line of Deb’s fury and plans to be home in time.

"We should come here sometime," you tell him one night. "You have to see the tango dancers."

"Maybe we can go there in December," Brian suggests.

"Please, not this close," you groan. "It’s getting hot here, you know. I don’t want to see this place again for at least another... two years."

"Already sick of it," he teases. "Aren’t the guys supposed to be hot?"

"They are but I am too pooped out to fuck them." You sigh. "Besides, they all speak Spanish."

"Now that is hot!" He laughs. "Not you being pooped out, I mean. But the Spanish speaking guys."

"None of them are as hot as you are." You yawn, feeling sleep approaching you.

He tells you to go to sleep and you do.

 

*********

 

Work may be hectic enough to render going out and cruising Spanish guys every night a very cumbersome activity, but fucking Stan every other night in his hotel room is a little too convenient.

Or at least you thought so. Until one night during the third week of your stay in the city, when, after you’ve fucked Stan and are about to roll out of the bed and reach for your clothes, he turns around and starts talking to you.

"I saw your boyfriend at the opening," he begins, making you pause in mid-movement, your hand hovering above your shoes. "He is very beautiful."

You take a deep breath and pull your hand back, turning to face him. "Yes, he is."

"Very successful too." Stan looks into your eyes. "Seems very close to you. Very proud of what you’ve accomplished."

You look at him. "He is."

"As he should be." You can see he’s struggling to smile, but for some reason the effort isn’t coming through as successfully as it did in the past. "You’re a very talented man. Not many people are as special as you are."

There is something in his voice that makes you feel uneasy. As if you’re about to witness an act that was never supposed to take place. You look into his eyes. "He’s special too."

He is quiet for a moment and then he nods. "He has to be, for you to love him so much."

You stay silent and stare at him, watching his eyes blink slowly as he looks at your face. After a moment, he says,

"But don’t you think, Justin, that humans have truly a great capacity to love?"

You watch him carefully. "Of course, they do."

He moistens his lips and sits up on the bed to face you. "That they can sometimes love a lot of people without compromising their love for any one person?"

You don’t know what to say to this. Of course, you can love more than one person at a time. But you can’t be in love with more than person at a time. You suspect it is the latter that he is talking about.

"Don’t you think human heart is big enough to encompass love for more than one person?" His voice has deepened with emotion, his face flushed as he stares at you imploringly, his breath coming out in short puffs.

"There are different kinds of love, Stan." You try to explain calmly. "The one you feel for a lover cannot be duplicated for anyone else, not if you have already found your soul mate."

You are reaching for your shoe again when suddenly he throws one arm around your head and presses closer to you, trying to kiss you on the lips. You feel a moist tongue touch your lips and stiffen in response, bringing your hands up to push him back.

"Hey," you snarl, as you stand up and away from him. "I told you I didn’t kiss on the mouth."

Your anger, however, deflates at the sight of his misery. He looks so upset at your rejection that you almost feel sorry for him.

"How do you know you have found your soul mate?" he demands.

"For God’s sake, Stan." You throw your hands up in exasperation. "What the fuck happened to you? I thought you didn’t believe in falling for anyone after your last boyfriend."

He stares up at you in anguish, before blurting out. "That’s what I’d thought too."

For a second, you have to close your eyes in frustration, and then you grab your things, turn around and walk out of the room.

And that is the last time you fuck Stan.

 

*********


	3. Chapter 3

Of course, when bad luck comes, it comes in threes.

You return to Pittsburgh right in time for Ted’s wedding, only to find that the conference Brian is attending in Los Angeles has been extended for another two days. And if that wasn’t enough, Leo Brown has set up for Brian to meet three CEOs from top companies that he has connections with and those guys will only be available on three different days during the next week. So Brian won’t be back until at least the Twenty-second.

So he’s going to miss both Ted’s reception and the flight to Bahamas. It seems that suddenly your vacation plans have been put on hold.

Mel and Lindsay are in town to attend the commitment with their brood as well. Not to mention, Debbie’s sympathy towards you being in full force, and all the expense of that-fucking-Brian. Your tedium at having to attend yet another gay wedding unfortunately gets mistaken for resentment at Brian’s absence.

"Poor Sunshine never gets what he wants," you hear her talking animatedly to a group of friends. "That asshole has always let him down. How many times is the poor child going to give him a chance?"

"Deb, Brian is stuck in LA with clients," you try to intervene. "He wanted to be here."

"Don’t you try defending him now!" She points her sharp talons at you, a scowl on her face. "He should’ve been here. We’re his family; how you treat family is always supposed to be more important than business."

"Please." You hear Mel snort in derision somewhere in the background. "As if Brian has ever attended a gay wedding. He wasn’t here for ours even though we asked him to be. Hell, he didn’t even attend his own wedding."

The words are cutting and spiteful and you can’t believe your so-called family doesn’t realize how much they are hurting you. Is this how they talk to Brian when he’s here? Yes, Brian didn’t attend his wedding because his wedding was cancelled. Do they think it was because Brian didn’t want to marry you? Are they really this fucked up? Or do they really think you have never had any say in your life with Brian?

"Actually, Brian did..." Lindsay starts to say something, only to be cut off by Michael’s loud voice.

"Look, Justin is right. Brian got stuck in LA in meetings," he says. "If it were in his hands, he would’ve been here. It’s not right for us to be jumping on his back when he’s not even present here."

The words are supportive, but when you catch his eye, he throws a knowing sneer in your direction. And you’re suddenly reminded of the argument you had with him on the Memorial Day weekend. You haven’t spoken to Michael since then, and you realize you haven’t missed anything by avoiding him. He hasn’t changed one bit.

Ben, ever the voice of reason, tells everyone to calm down. "It’s no use getting worked up over Brian like this. I am sure he has a perfectly valid reason why he couldn’t be here."

The ragging session over, everyone moves to the buffet table as if they hadn’t just been talking shit about one of their own only a minute ago. Your appetite is shot, though. You want to throw a fit, scream at everyone, tear the walls down in this place, just so you can show them how upset they have made you. At the very least, you want to throw down the champagne flute in your hand so hard that it shatters on the floor, and then stalk out of the place in indignation.

But you do none of those things. You sip your drink quietly, willing your heart to stop beating so fast, as the conversations around you mingle together to form one constant thrum of static.

The words "Brian" and "property" take you out of your stupor as you hear Emmett talk to Blake.

"Yeah, Teddy told me Brian’s selling some huge piece of property he bought a couple years ago," Emmett says. "I asked him for details but you know Teddy, he said it was all hush hush, that he wasn’t supposed to discuss it with anyone."

You frown as the words sink into your conscience. Brian is selling property? But what huge piece of property did he buy a couple of years ago? Other than...

Your frown deepens as you feel your heart start thudding inside your chest. It couldn’t possibly be the House, could it? You haven’t even seen it since you left for New York. You don’t know if he even has it anymore.

But what else could it be?

 

*********

 

Since you are officially supposed to be on vacation, you decide to stay in Pittsburgh for now rather than returning to New York.

The gang’s scathing remarks and knowing looks fill your head as you lie on Brian’s bed in the loft and wait for him to return. You know it’s all bullshit. Brian had a perfectly legitimate reason for not making it. Yet, for some goddamned reason, you can’t help but think of points of reference in your past when you’d faced similar disappointments.

Take Vermont for instance. How can you forget the place that was supposed to be your first vacation getaway with Brian? The vacation that got fucked up because Brian had to go away on business. Because he put business before you. Just like this time.

But fuck that. You know it’s not like this time. This time, you’re not stupid enough to go away on the vacation by yourself.

And you know all of them are clueless. Mel is an idiot. She doesn’t know Brian like you do. She has the gall to joke about the wedding as if it meant nothing. And Michael, telling you that Brian wasn’t ready to commit with you. That the rings didn’t mean anything. That it was a temporary bout of insanity. They are all wrong, dead fucking wrong. They’re all lost as far as Brian is concerned.

The rings meant... Brian had gotten the message. He was telling you he was willing to commit with you on your terms. That was what the rings and the vows meant. It was your decision as much as his not to go through with the ceremony. Because you realized in time that you didn’t need to get married to know that Brian loved you.

In a way, Michael does have a point. The wedding and the rings and the whole commitment thing did overwhelm Brian too much. That was the reason why you told him he was changing too much. That was the reason why you called off the wedding. Because you didn’t want to lose the person you loved just to have a ceremony that didn’t mean anything. So in that sense, yes, Michael is right: Brian wasn’t ready.

So if Brian is selling off the House he bought for you, it’s okay. And if he finally did return those rings, that is okay too. After all, why else have you never seen those rings since the day you left Pittsburgh, if it isn’t for the fact that Brian did not keep them? So what if it hurts more than you can bear right now? It was all your decision. You are the one who did it.

You were given a blank canvas in your hands. And this is what you painted on it.

 

*********

 

The Monday after Ted’s reception, you go to visit Daphne. She takes one look at your face and envelops you in a big hug.

"What happened?" she asks, concern evident in her tone.

"Nothing," you mumble, feeling utterly small in her arms.

She pulls away to look at you. "Don’t try to bullshit me, okay," she scolds. "Now tell me. What happened with Brian?"

You realize there’s no point in trying to hide anything from her. She knows you too fucking well. So you tell her everything. From Michael’s words, to the whole saga of Stan, to Brian’s visit to LA, to him missing Ted’s wedding, to your overhearing Emmett’s remarks about Brian selling property.

When you are finally done, you sit back on the seat and look up at her expectantly. What you are not ready for is a sharp smack on your arm from her.

"You are such an idiot, you know," she scowls at you.

You frown. "Now what?"

"You think Brian would sell off the house that he bought for you?" She asks. "You think he’ll do something like this without even asking you first?"

You feel pissed that she doesn’t even doubt him for a second. "It’s not like I’ve even SEEN the House since I moved to New York." You grumble bitterly. "It might as well be a figment of my imagination. Just like the wedding that never happened and the fucking rings that were never seen again."

She hits you again. "See, this is exactly what I am talking about. You had told me you were the one who didn’t want the rings. And now you’re blaming him?"

"I am not blaming him." You huff in frustration. "I know I am the one who fucked up, the one who ruined everything. You don’t have to remind me."

Her expression softens at your tone. "That’s not what I said," she says gently.

"I don’t know what else you’re saying, Daph."

"Look, why don’t you call him up?" She says. "Ask him yourself?"

"You’re kidding, right?" You shake your head. "He’s stuck in meetings with some of the biggest names in the industry. I am not calling him to ask him this shit."

"But you could leave him a message to talk to you when he's free," she advises practically. "He’d call you back."

"I have my cell phone turned off."

"What?" She frowns. "Why?"

"Stan."

She rolls her eyes. "He’s stalking you?"

"Kind of." Well, not really, you think. But yeah, it could be seen that way. "He’s left me like seven messages even though I told him not to. I don’t want to talk to him."

She pauses for a moment, thinking. "So the phone option is off."

"Yep."

"Then you’ll just have to look through some of his stuff."

You stare at her. "What?"

"You’re staying at the loft, right? Just go through some of his drawers," she says as if it’s the most normal thing in the world. "If he’s selling the house, those documents are bound to be somewhere, right?"

You look at her incredulously. "You want me to go through his stuff behind his back?"

"Hey, you’re the partner." She shrugs. "You have every right to go through his stuff."

"I don’t even live at the loft anymore."

"He wouldn’t mind. Trust me." She smiles. "And it’d put your mind at ease."

"I don’t think I can." You shake your head.

"Sure you can." She pats you on the back. "Just a few of his drawers. I know this will work."

Now it’s your turn to roll your eyes. "How?"

She grins. "Call it female intuition."

"You’re going to get me in trouble."

"Please, you’re not afraid of him, are you?" she snorts.

You look down at your hands and sigh. "Not of him." And then you lift your head to look into her eyes. "Of what I might find."

She is silent for a moment. And then she shrugs. "At least, you’d know."

 

*********

 

The loft is one of those things from the Pitts that changed with the passing years.

The change is not in the way the walls look or the floor feels under your feet. It’s not in the possessions residing within. Brian still has the same state of the art interiors, the same uncluttered, minimalist taste in decor, the same kind of expensive designer furniture from Milan.

The change is somewhere deep within the soul of the structure. It’s something inherent, something hidden that goes beyond the confines of the four walls and the high ceilings. It’s in the attitude of the place, you think as you roam around the loft, it is as if it no longer knows you.

You don’t know if it’s because Brian is not here at the moment, or if it’s because, as you told Daphne, you don’t live here anymore.

You start with the small office area at one side of the living room. You open the desk drawers and pick through the papers inside with tense fingers, feeling like an intruder who’s hell bent on disturbing your lover’s private stuff. Bank slips. Email printouts. Presentation hardcopies. Mostly Kinnetik stuff. Not what you’re looking for.

You move to the bedroom. The first place you check there is the bedside drawer, sitting down on the side of the bed to look inside. Of course, it’s filled with nothing but condoms and lube and a bottle of Xanax that you suspect Brian has started using more often during the recent work related stress. Shit. You get up and walk to the closet and as you slide open the doors, you sink to your knees to look inside the boxes sitting on the bottom cabinets. Underwear, clothes, shoes, towels, linen. All the usual suspects that one would expect to find in a guy’s bedroom cabinets. Fuck, there’s nothing here. You don’t know why you listened to Daphne in the first place.

You get up from the floor and shuffling back, sit down on the bed again. You stare gloomily at the closet in front of you, your fingers clutching the duvet tensely, you heart filling with lethargy you can’t seem to control.

You suspect if Brian is going to sell a fucking house, he probably isn’t going to keep those documents at home. You should’ve thought of the possibility that any such papers would most likely be kept with his lawyer or something. You shake your head as you consciously unclench your fingers and splay them on top of the thousand thread count Egyptian silk duvet -- rubbing them across the soft texture, letting its smoothness pervade your senses.

At least this is one thing that will always remain the same no matter where Brian lives. He can never do without his fine quality bed fabrics.

You pull yourself up from the bed, and step forward to slide shut the closet doors again. It is as you turn around to face the bedroom again that you notice something odd about the frame of the large King sized bed. You look down at the platform above which the bed frame is set, and see a slit running across the middle of the front side that you hadn’t noticed before. Of course, Brian changed his old bed about a month after you left Pittsburgh, so it’s no wonder you didn’t notice anything.

You kneel down on the floor in front of the bed, and run one finger across the slit. Nothing. You touch the bottom of the frame and give it a push and the whole section swings inside, revealing a hidden storage area. Letting a breath out, you fall back on your haunches and stare at the revealed opening for a few second. Then you get down on your arms and knees to bring your head closer to the floor and peer inside. Yep, there is definitely something inside there.

Your heart thudding in your ears, you slip your arm inside to grab whatever it is. Your fingers brush against something wooden and you grab the edges with your hand, pulling the object out. It’s a wooden box, about 16 by 10 inches in length and 6 inches deep, with lacquered dark Walnut finish. You touch the lid with careful hands and then, taking a deep breath, you grab the edges and pull it open.

The recognition hits you with such full force, that you almost feel your heart slowing it’s beat. White spots suddenly appear in front of your eyes, your breath choking in your throat, as you look down at the objects inside.

The white silk is still blemished with your dried blood, the red now dulled to a drab, faded olive. The scarf, which you hadn’t seen since you slid it from around Brian’s neck that night so many years ago, lies folded at one side of the box. You heart flutters in your chest as you slowly reach for it and as your fingers fold to grab it, you feel your heart start to pound inside your chest. Taking a stuttering breath, you clench it in your fist and touch it with your other hand, feeling the brittleness of the dried blood as your run your hand against it.

Why is it still here? You had thought Brian had gotten rid of it, had thrown it away, had done away with the painful memories it had incorporated within its being. The prom, the bashing, his guilt at your getting hurt. You had thought he’d abolished all those excruciating reminders. You close your eyes as you bring the scarf closer to your face, letting it slide against your skin, smelling the faint metallic smell of spilled blood still hidden inside it. You try to imagine what Brian must’ve felt all those weeks wearing this thing around his neck, and why he kept it here all these years. But try as you might, nothing comes to you. Your thoughts are jumbled, confused, chaotic and you can’t think of a single reason why he would keep it here.

You open your eyes and put the scarf aside, your gaze falling on the other items in the box. A small object wrapped in cellophane lying at one side, a familiar black velvet box and a transparent file cover at the bottom, which apparently is filled with some kind of documents. Your breath now coming out in puffs, you leave the file alone for now and pick up the cellophane-wrapped object instead, twisting the plastic cover round and round until it’s open and you are able to slip the now familiar cowry-shell bracelet out.

You feel a frown form between your brows, as you turn the bracelet over, your thumb touching the B.K. carved on the back. The last time you had touched this was when you’d put it back on Brian’s wrist five years ago. You were still with Ethan then. And Brian had never worn it again. Your mouth suddenly feels dry as you shake your head, once again trying to wrap your mind around the reason why he had thrown this here and never worn it again when you had brought it back for him.

You put the bracelet aside as well and pick up the velvet box that you know contains the rings. The rings that Brian had bought for you, to make you happy, but which you had left sitting in this box on the coffee table as you had walked out of the loft. The rings you had thought he’d returned. But obviously he hadn’t. Why are these lying in this box then? Why haven’t you ever seen them again? Why did Brian feel the need to hide them?

Puzzlement filling your head, you put the rings aside, and take out the file you are now sure contains the documents leading to the sale of the House. You open the cover and start reading the first paper filed. A letter containing quotations from a pool brushing and vacuuming service. Dated November 7. What? You frown and turn to the next page. Renovation charges for fixing doors on three stalls in the stable. Dated October 16. Your frown deepens as you turn to the next page. Painting charges for doing four rooms on the first floor. Dated August 28. Next: Quotation from a designer furniture firm for installing the entertainment center set for the library downstairs. Dated June 5. Then: a quotation from a gardening firm for landscaping the seven-acres back yard. Dated March 17.

You feel disoriented as you leaf through all these papers, each detailing the costs charged for doing some kind of work on the House. Either it’s the rooms being painted, or there’s some renovation going on at some place, or someone’s transforming the backyard into manicured lawns with small rock gardens and waterfalls being installed to the side. These papers date all the way back to May 2005, one month after you’d left for New York. However, the frequency of these works being done has increased only in the last one year.

Brian has been busy getting stuff done at the House for the past three years, without letting you get the wind of it. You don’t think he had been living there. No, of course not. He still lives at the loft. But he also has never taken you to the House since you left. So what the fuck has he been doing? Why all these details? Who is he doing this for? Your teeth gnawing at your bottom lip, you pull out all these papers and bills out of the file cover, before you notice the final document at the bottom of the file.

The title on the front page embossed in bold letters saying Joint property ownership with survivorship rights makes your heart quiver for a second.

Your hands shake a little as you take out the stapled document from the file and open it.

You see the names BRIAN A. KINNEY and JUSTIN C. TAYLOR written amidst the jumble of legal technobabble.

And forget to breathe.

 

*********

 

"Hey. You have your phone turned off. Ted says you’re staying at the loft, but you’re not picking up the phone there either. Where the fuck are you? I got off early from those appointments. Fuck, I know, it isn’t exactly early since I missed Theodore’s thing and our flight. But instead of the twenty-second, I am now coming back on the eighteenth. I have gotten the seats reconfirmed for that night, for our flight to the Bahamas. I have also arranged for your tickets to NY at the Liberty Air desk for the night of seventeenth. So you should go home and rest up for the trip. I on the other hand will meet you directly at Kennedy as my flight from LAX lands only a couple hours before we have to leave. I just might get the chance to change my clothes in the Liberty Air club. But if not, we’ll see. Okay, I hope you get this in time. Can’t wait to see you. Sorry for the mess up. I miss you."

 

*********

 

You watch Brian walk into the Liberty Air VIP Lounge and feel life being breathed back into you.

He is impeccably dressed in a slate gray Armani suit, stylish dark glasses covering his eyes. Your heart beating loudly in your ears, you walk into his arms without a second thought. He kisses your lips, humming happily against your mouth as you wrap your arms tightly around him. He chuckles, trying to shift back to look at your face, but you sink into his embrace, not able to look into his eyes. Your veins zing with a strange punch of desperation, as you mentally make your hands not clutch at his clothes.

"Justin?"

You kiss his throat, breathing him in, willing your heart to stop beating so fast.

"Hey," he slides a hand up your back, his fingers brushing your neck.

You just nod against his chest, inhaling his scent deeply into your lungs, as your hands run down his own back.

"Justin..."

You know you’re probably freaking him out but you can’t stop holding him. You just want to assure yourself that he really is here. That despite all the bullshit around you, he’s here and for some crazy reason, he actually wants to be with you.

"Justin," he repeats.

"Just..." You tilt your head up to drop a kiss on his mouth and then bury your face into his shoulder. "Just let me..." You leave the sentence unfinished, not knowing how to explain what you want, when you don’t know yourself.

But Brian doesn’t ask for any explanation.

He just murmurs, "Okay," against your face and stays rooted to the spot right in the middle of the Liberty Air Lounge, holding you close to his heart.

 

*********

 

Being an artist, it is in your nature to try seeing things at a very visceral level.

The color of the sand granules shifting between your fingers. The tingling sensation of a cool wave washing between your feet. The small seashells lining the beach, some broken, some not, but each as fascinating in their tiny imperfect details as they are in their breathtaking beauty.

You draw colors and images and shapes of life as you see it as a profession. But there are some things that are so hard to duplicate on canvas, you’re not sure you can even make the attempt.

As you sip a fruity concoction under the beach umbrella, the seemingly unending expanse of sandy white beaches spread out before you, the water lapping at your feet unbelievably blue, you realize that Bahamas is possibly the most beautiful place you’ve ever been to.

You feel your heart skip a beat as you hear Brian approach you from behind, ruffling your hair as he slides down to the blanket, shifting closer to you under the umbrella. You turn your face and watch his eyes closely for a second, before reaching up to kiss him, slipping your tongue inside for a long taste.

Brian murmurs appreciatively as he returns the kiss and you feel it again: that zing of desperation that had hit you in the airport, and since then, has been making appearances at uncanny times.

Your eyes close as you breathe deeply, telling your heart to stop fucking with your head. You need distraction, you remind yourself as you kiss Brian’s chest, rubbing you nose into his skin. This place is distraction. You’re here with Brian on a fucking vacation. Why is your mind filling with this unease then? What are you doing to yourself?

"What’s up?"

Your eyes snap open at Brian’s question and you give him what you hope is a believable smile. "It’s just good to be here with you." You kiss his chin.

"Here." He looks into your eyes. "In the Bahamas."

"Here. Away." You shrug. "Just you and me."

"We’ve been away before, Justin," he says casually.

"Yeah." You nod as you shift to fit your head in the crook of his neck, feeling his arm come around your shoulders. You hear the seagulls squeaking as they rise up from clear blue waters and for a second wonder how that sense of freedom, of touching the skies, makes these simple creatures feel.

"We have." You sigh. "But never like this."

 

*********

 

The depression hits you full throttle late that night while you are sitting in the luxury hotel suite Brian has booked for the stay.

You had hit the casinos and the bars with him earlier in the evening, hoping the sights and sounds of the exotic, beautiful place would help improve your countenance. Unfortunately, seeing the happy faces around, as Brian walked with his arm around your waist, had only made you feel like a liar. So you had returned well before the stroke of midnight, telling Brian you were too tired to do much sightseeing this night.

It is after you two have returned to the rooms that Brian remembers he was supposed to buy cigarettes from the shop in the lobby and leaves you here alone, saying he’ll be back.

Surrounded by your lush, opulent settings, the tastefully decorated rooms all done in shades of whites and creams, with the beautiful silk curtains covering the door to the quaint balcony softly murmuring in the wind, you feel a sudden onslaught of self-loathing begin in the pit of your stomach. Your heart hammering inside your chest, you feel it spread slowly, creepingly outwards, filling your chest, moving up your arms, zinging through your intestines, as it crawls up your esophagus and lodges itself into your throat until you can’t breathe, until your eyes water and you feel your legs folding under you, as you sink to your knees, your teeth biting into your lips in despair.

Hate. Love. Pain. All these emotions coalesce together to form a stinging, choking sensation that can only be labeled as guilt. Guilty of doubting him. Guilty of not being able to trust even after all these years. When he trusted you with everything he ever held dear to his heart. When he still trusts you.

But you don’t deserve that trust. How can you when in the past you have broken every single promise you ever made to him.

So what if you told Stan to back off when you did? You never made any effort to stop him from developing those feelings in the first place while you had the chance. Just because Brian had told you that you were free to fuck anyone as many times as you wanted, you nearly got entangled with a stupid lovelorn twink when you should’ve known better. You had known better. You had seen the signs, had felt the stirrings of disquiet right in your gut, but you had done nothing to put an end to it.

Just like in the past when you broke every single rule you made. You bound him with rules and then failed to follow them yourself. Always fucking failed. And you think you deserve him? You think you deserve these luxuries he lavishes upon you? You haven’t earned them. You haven’t earned any of this!

"Justin?"

You hear his voice at the door and realize he has returned from downstairs, but for the life of you, you can’t bring yourself to lift your head up.

"Justin, what’s wrong?" Brian’s voice rises as he comes closer.

"Nothing," you mumble, your back against the wall, your body half bent in front of you, as you steady your shaking hands by holding your knees.

He is now right next to you. "Nothing?" His voice is incredulous. "Then what is this?"

"Nothing," you repeat.

"It’s NOT nothing." Brian snaps as he grabs your arm. "You’ve been fucking stressed out ever since you came on this trip. What the fuck is going on?" He yanks you up to face him, his face filled with indignant anger.

But whatever he sees on your face gives him pause, his expression changing from anger to distress in an instant. "Justin!"

"Brian." You choke out, hating yourself for upsetting him.

"What is it?" he asks.

Your teeth bites into your lips, your breath caught in your throat as you swallow repeatedly.

"Justin, what ..."

"How can you stand it?" You suddenly find your voice.

He grimaces. "Stand what?"

"Me!" You snarl.

He stares at you. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"I am talking about TRUST, Brian." Your teeth grit in anger at yourself, at your failures. "How can you stand trusting me when I’ve fucked you over so many times in the past?"

"That’s bullshit." He shakes his head. "You have never fucked me over."

"Stop lying, Brian because that is bullshit." You bare your teeth. "What did I ever do to gain your trust? NOTHING. Why do you do it then? Why do you put up with me?"

"Justin...." He tries to speak but you are on a roll.

"Why, when I have nothing but doubts and fears and fucking distrust plaguing my whole being. How the hell can you do it?"

"Do what?" He asks helplessly.

"Go on trusting me," you cry. "Blindly."

"It’s not blind." He throws his hands up, huffing incredulously. "This is unfuckingbelievable."

"What, Brian?" You laugh bitterly as you push off the wall and straighten up. "Do you even know or understand what really is unbelievable?"

"What..."

You push him out of way as you stalk inside the bedroom, walk to the closet that holds your luggage, and throw open it’s door. You take out the duffle bag you had carried from Pittsburgh, and from inside you take out the items you had found in the wooden box.

"This, Brian." You wave the scarf in his face, watching his eyes widen in recognition. "This is unbelievable. That you are bound by rules and fucking promises and keep on working your end of the deal, and yet, you get nothing in return." You bite every word you say, your voice filled with anger. "Except... this: A fucking blood-soaked scarf. That reminds you of the guilt that filled your being at getting me hurt."

You throw the scarf on the bed and pick up the bracelet. "And this: My gift to you... that you can’t even wear anymore because I tainted it with my fucking infidelity."

The bracelet too goes on the bed as you grab the box of rings and face him, your eyes stinging with unshed tears. "And this: your heart on the sleeve, Brian, that you gave to me, these rings which I fucking threw back in your face as I packed my bags and left for greener pastures. When you, the man who loved me, the man whom I supposedly loved back... was giving me a piece of his soul with words and gestures and everything I had ever asked for and more."

You throw the box on the bed and grab the final item, the file containing all the documents concerning the House. "And this, Brian. This House that you can neither live in nor get rid of. This House that you bought for me, that you keep working on and renovating and getting shit done when I haven’t even ASKED about it in the last three years." You throw the papers down on the bed. "This is what unbelievable feels like, Brian. That I treat you like this and you go on loving me," you cry. "It’s UNFATHOMABLE because no one deserves to be treated with such contempt, such blatant, faithless deceit!"

"THAT IS NOT FUCKING TRUE!" he yells.

You watch dumbfounded, as a mélange of emotions fly across his face. Anger. Incredulity. Desperation.

He looks into your eyes. "That is NOT what it means, you idiot!"

He steps forward to walk past you to the bed. "This scarf." He picks it up. "It doesn’t mean guilt, all right? It means freedom. For me. That night, when you slid it off my neck, and threw it to the floor, you freed me from that guilt. You set me free, Justin. You told me that while it was okay to feel like the whole fucking world had gone to hell when you were still lying in the hospital... you were all right now." His voice cracks. "That you’d forgiven me. You did not hold me responsible like the rest of the world did. You trusted me to love you, to touch you..."

"Brian."

He leaves the scarf and picks up the next item. "This bracelet. Tainted by your infidelity, my ass." He snorts. "You were the only one who actually made an effort to find the truth when my cunt sister and her spawn of Satan accused me of molesting him." He looks into your eyes. "You saved me, Justin. I didn’t stop wearing it because it was tainted. I stopped wearing it because... I no longer needed to." He sighs. "You stood up for me, even though we weren’t together, you trusted me. You had faith in me."

He puts the bracelet down and picks up the ring box. "And I had faith in you. That’s why I kept the rings, and the House, all these years. You didn’t throw them back in my face. I thought I was showing you that I trusted you, that I knew you’d come back to me one day, or that I’d come to you when the time was right. That keeping these meant we were still together, despite the distance." He looks at you searchingly. "Are you telling me you have not felt this way?"

You swallow hard. "I have."

"Then what?" he asks.

"There’s so much that I’ve misunderstood." You look at him helplessly.

He puts the rings down and comes forward to put his hands on your shoulders, leaning down to stare into your eyes. "You understand it all, Sunshine. You may have misinterpreted some of it, but you always made the right decision."

"But..."

"You came with me, didn’t you?" He traces your jaw with his index finger as he looks at you closely. "Despite of all that went down with... Stan."

Your mouth falls open at this. "You... how do you..."

"How do I know his name?"

You nod mutely.

"He called me." He snorts as you feel yourself sputter in disbelief. "Don’t know where he got my number from but he was blabbing some shit about soul mates and the human capacity for love."

"That son of a bitch!" You growl. "I can’t believe he had the gall to...."

"Stop." He shakes you. "I told him to fuck off."

You suddenly look up at him, feeling a nagging worry uncurl in your chest. "Brian," you say to him. "Nothing ever really went down with Stan."

He smiles. "I know, Sunshine."

Still, you touch his arm, intending to make this very, very clear. "He was just a fuck. A repeat fuck. I should’ve stopped fucking him long before I did. That was my mistake." You look into his eyes. "But other than that, nothing ever really happened."

"And still you let all these worries fill your pretty little blond head." He pulls you close to him, wrapping his arms around you. "You’ve been blaming yourself for all the wrong things, things that are in the past." He looks into your eyes. "When all that matters is what we have now."

A sudden sense of relief fills you. All that guilt that had been harboring inside your head finally melts at the slide of his soothing hands on your back. You slide your fingers through Brian’s hair and kiss him moistly, your tongue tracing the shape of his perfect lips.

"I love you, Brian." you sniffle against his lips.

"You stupid little twat." He huffs as he kisses you back. "You’re going to give yourself an aneurysm someday." He bites your lips. "And me too."

You laugh and feel happy tears sting your eyes at the same time.

"You’re such a drama queen, Sunshine."

"So are you."

"Not nearly as much as you are."

"Imagine that."

 

*********

 

You once read somewhere that there was a thin line between ecstasy and despair.

You feel like you’ve crossed that line a few times during the last many days. However, the sense of relief that you feel at clearing things up with Brian is so profound that you feel lighter than you have ever felt in your life.

The next evening, as you are soaking in the hot Jacuzzi with him, the two of you soaping each other lazily, you tell Brian about what happened at Ted’s reception, repeating each and everything that was said about him in his absence. You also tell him about the incident with Michael at the comic book shop, back during the Memorial Day weekend.

He listens to you quietly, his face tense, and when you are done, he says he doesn’t give a damn about derision from people who think they know him, but really do not. People who call themselves his family and then talk like that behind his back mean nothing to him anymore. He’s used to it and it doesn’t make any difference.

But then he pulls you close and kisses you tenderly. "However," he begins. "I do not like it when people try to fill your mind with doubts about me." You try to tell him you never believed any of that shit but he stops you. "I know you didn’t believe that. But there is more."

You look at him questioningly.

He slips his hands up your back and runs his fingers in circles on your skin, his touch soothing and intoxicating. "The reason you never saw the rings and the House after you left is not because I was trying to hide anything, Justin." He looks at you. "It was because... you went to New York to make a career. You were starting from scratch, making the rounds, learning new things. I didn’t want to distract you while you were doing that, or to remind you of things which could’ve waited for a few more years until the time was right."

You watch him with amazement filling your heart, your eyes wide with wonder, as he leans in to kiss you again. Then he pulls back and looks into your eyes. "The House and the rings have always been yours, Justin. The only thing that matters is the timing." He smiles. "Whenever you’re ready, you can have them."

You feel your throat tighten with emotion as all your questions are answered in one stroke. You wrap your arms around his body, feeling his erection poking you in the stomach, and kiss him thoroughly. He slides his hands down your back until he’s holding your ass with both hands and you lean down to first nip and then kiss at this throat, his answering sigh making you moan. You grab the supplies from the ledge, hand him the tube of lube and then slide your hands up his arms to hold his shoulders.

"I want you to fuck me now," you whisper in his ear as he settles you back against the side comfortably.

"That can be arranged," he says with a smile before covering your body with his own.

 

*********

 

You always thought life was like a blank canvas.

You could fill it with what you liked, making it as painful or as beautiful as you wanted.

As you sit on the beach with the sketchpad and draw the sight of Brian checking his email on his laptop, you realize that he indeed makes a beautiful subject to draw no matter what the setting.

You understand now that while it may not be possible to duplicate every tiny detail about beautiful nature through your art, the process should never be abandoned before trial.

It’s your canvas. You can capture on it everything that you see.

It’s only a matter of keeping your eyes open.

 

*********  
The End


End file.
